Book
Title: The
Swan Bonnet
Author: Katherine L. Holmes
Release Date: July 14th , 2013
Genre: YA Mystery Length: 168
Publisher: GMTA Publishing LLC
Presented by: Enigma Press
Author: Katherine L. Holmes
Release Date: July 14th , 2013
Genre: YA Mystery Length: 168
Publisher: GMTA Publishing LLC
Presented by: Enigma Press
SYNOPSIS
Unknown to Dawn, her
grandfather has shot an old swan out of mercy. In their coastal
Alaskan town, her father buys the swan pelt, preventing her Uncle
Alex, a fur trader, from selling it for export. Dawn’s father
surprises her part-Aleut mother with a hat she helped to make and
also with an idea to catch poachers. Shooting swans has become
illegal but Alaska is a territory and Prohibition occupies the
Sheriff.
Dawn and her mother become involved with suspicious responses to the swan bonnet besides its haunting effect. Because Dawn’s grandparents see the swans first, Dawn agrees to secretly watch the migration with the Deputy Sheriff’s son. But after she and her mother encounter women from a ship and find out about a hunting party, they ride to the inlet. There are also townspeople roving the shore but who is the vigilante and who is the poacher?
Dawn and her mother become involved with suspicious responses to the swan bonnet besides its haunting effect. Because Dawn’s grandparents see the swans first, Dawn agrees to secretly watch the migration with the Deputy Sheriff’s son. But after she and her mother encounter women from a ship and find out about a hunting party, they ride to the inlet. There are also townspeople roving the shore but who is the vigilante and who is the poacher?
EXCERPT
Prologue
A time ago in the frontier
territory, flocks of migrating swans chuffed to the same ocean inlet
and swooped down for a night or two in the spring and in the fall.
The far bay was hedged in hardy reeds and fenced off by foothills,
providing rest and refreshment. Whistler and trumpeter swans arrived
as regularly as the mountain streams melted and the snow came. In
the spring, one pair stayed to nest while the others flew on. They
were waiting in the fall with their cygnets when the swans from the
north stopped to strengthen themselves before their journey over the
Pacific Ocean.
A few years after 1900, a man
came to the inlet with his wife and boy. He built a cabin even if
the pair of swans on the bay flaunted their wings at his sailing
skiff. They wouldn’t be properly introduced until the garden was
grown and the woman and boy tossed sunflower seeds along the shore.
The man fed them corn when he sailed from the inlet to the waters
that were full of salmon.
The new family woke up one
autumn morning and found the pair of swans hosting a flotilla of
migrators that trampled the shore and feasted on the sunflowers.
They ate the last of the corn too but in their wake, the woman found
swan feathers and down. She gathered up the precious plumage and
took it to the nearest town on the Alaska seacoast. That was half a
morning’s wagon ride from the cabin under the foothills. Merchant
ships came to the harbor for salmon and fur. The swan feathers sold
like caviar.
As more folks moved to Alaska,
the family at the bay couldn’t help but notice how the migrating
flocks were dwindling.
Towards 1920, fewer and fewer of the trumpeter swans made rest stops at the inlet. But whistlers still came after nesting in the tundra.
AUTHOR RECOMMENDATIONS
"What a
relaxing, classic, and vibrant story..." - from
the HarperCollins Editor's Desk review at Authonomy.com
AUTHOR
BIO
After stints in publishing and as a reporter, Katherine L. Holmes obtained an M. A. in Writing from the University of Minnesota. Her poems and short stories have been published in many journals. In 2012, her short story collection, Curiosity Killed the Sphinx and Other Stories, was published by Hollywood Books International. She has also published a children’s fantasy, The House in Windward Leaves.
After stints in publishing and as a reporter, Katherine L. Holmes obtained an M. A. in Writing from the University of Minnesota. Her poems and short stories have been published in many journals. In 2012, her short story collection, Curiosity Killed the Sphinx and Other Stories, was published by Hollywood Books International. She has also published a children’s fantasy, The House in Windward Leaves.
AUTHOR
LINKS
BOOK LINKS
Thanks for being my guest today, Katherine. What an interesting story line!
ReplyDeleteThis looks very good.
ReplyDeleteKristy Brown